News

The Bard College Dance Program is pleased to announce that Yebel Gallegos, a dance artist from El Paso, Texas, will be joining the Bard Dance Program faculty in fall 2021.

“I am looking forward to Yebel joining the dance faculty at Bard,” said Maria Simpson, director of the Dance Program at Bard. “His accomplishments as an artist in the U.S. and Mexico and his research into the history of dance in Mexico through the lens of border politics, are a robust combination that I am certain will draw students to his courses and colleagues to collaborative projects.”

Cameron McKinney and Alanna Morris-Van Tassel will be the spring 2021 Bard Dance Program/Gibney Partnership Teaching Fellows. McKinney and Morris-Van Tassel will be teaching the Intermediate/Advanced Modern and Dance Repertory courses. The Bard/Gibney Partnership was launched in fall 2020 by the Bard Dance Program and GIBNEY, a New York City–based dance and social justice organization led by Founder, Artistic Director, and CEO Gina Gibney. The Partnership provides unique opportunities for Bard students to work closely with Gibney’s resident dance troupe, Gibney Company, a commission-based, repertory company that works with renowned and rising international choreographers representing a broad range of aesthetics and techniques. For more information, visit dance.bard.edu/gibney.

“We are very excited to have Cameron and Alanna on board for the spring semester,” said Simpson. “Each represents a unique and dynamic boundary-pushing point of view in their work in Dance and I am thrilled that the students will have the opportunity to work with them this spring.”

Yebel Gallegos, a dance artist from El Paso, Texas, played an important role in the founding of Cressida Danza Contemporánea in Yucatán, Mexico. During his time in Cressida Danza he served as dancer, company teacher, rehearsal director, and academic coordinator for the Conservatorio de Danza de Yucatán. While in Mexico, he also helped in the creation and implementation of the Festival Yucatán Escénica, an international contemporary dance festival hosted by Cressida Danza. Yebel recently concluded a six-year tenure working full time with the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. While in Utah, he also involved himself in projects with local artists, as well as teaching various population groups in Utah and across the United States. He has performed work from artists such as; Twyla Tharp, Doug Varone, Ann Carlson, Daniel Charon, Stephen Koester, Netta Yerushalmy, Claudia LaVista, Joanna Kotze, Jonah Bokaer, among others. Yebel has had the fortune to travel internationally as a performer and educator to countries such as; South Korea, Mongolia, France, Austria, and Chile. He earned his BFA in dance, both from the University of Texas at Austin and from the Escuela Profesional de Danza de Mazatlán, directed by Delfos Dance Company. He currently resides in Seattle, WA, where he is expected to receive his Master in Fine Arts degree from the University of Washington in the Spring of 2021.

Cameron McKinney, the artistic director of Kizuna Dance, is a New York City-based choreographer and educator. With over 15 years of Japanese language study, he created Kizuna Dance with the mission of using contemporary floorwork to create works that celebrate the Japanese culture. He was recently selected as a 2019-20 U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Creative Artist Fellow to collaborate with renowned Japanese choreographer Toru Shimazaki and present work in showcases in Japan alongside the 2020/2021 Tokyo Olympic Games’ events. He is a 2020 Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellow at The School at Jacob’s Pillow (under the direction of Dianne McIntyre and Risa Steinbeirg), a 2017-18 Alvin Ailey Foundation New Directions Choreography Lab Fellow, and a 2018 Asian Cultural Council Individual Grantee. Through Kizuna Dance, Cameron has presented work and taught in fifteen states and in Japan, Mexico, France, and the UK. His commissions include Princeton University, twice from the Joffrey Ballet School, twice from the Let’s Dance International Frontiers Festival, The Dance Gallery Festival, LIU Brooklyn, CREATE:ART, The Thacher School, and SUNY Brockport, among numerous others. His teaching credits include Adjunct Lecturer positions at Princeton University and Queensborough Community College, and he has taught on faculty at Gibney Dance since 2016. He has also taught on faculty at the Joffrey Dance School, the Charlotte Dance Festival, the Tennessee Dance Festival, the Southern Vermont Dance Festival, and Williamsburg Movement and Arts Center. He is currently building Nagare Technique, a training module that blends street dance styles and contemporary floorwork. Through Kizuna Dance’s new Culture Commissions program, he also directly supports emerging artists through commissions for new works created through research-oriented explorations into the Japanese culture.

Brooklyn native and Saint Paul-based artist Alanna Morris-Van Tassel, is a dancer, choreographer, educator, and artist organizer whose work excavates cultural retention and fragmentation within Caribbean diasporic identity. Morris Van Tassel was named one of Dance Magazine's “25 to Watch!” for 2018 and City Pages’ Artist of the Year for 2018. She was a featured dancer with Minnesota-based dance company TU Dance (2007-2017), a TU Dance Artistic Associate (2020), and is a current advisor to Springboard Danse Montreal. Her self-produced solo project,“Yam, Potatoe an Fish!” was named Star Tribune’s Best of Dance (2018) and earned her City Pages’ Best Choreographer (2019).

Morris-Van Tassel is artistic director of Alanna Morris-Van Tassel Productions (AMVTP), founded in 2017 to produce dance, education, and community-building initiatives. She was a 2015 McKnight Dance Fellow. Morris-Van Tassel is a graduate of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City and holds a BFA in Dance from The Juilliard School. She is currently building a performance art project, Black Light, which explores the nobility of black-ness, divine feminine expression, and primordial creativity. alannamvt.com.

For more information about the Bard Dance Program, please visit dance.bard.edu.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 160-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.

For the past 50 years, Bard alumnus Chris Claremont ’72 has graced the Marvel Universe with his brilliant storytelling—creating and defining some of its most iconic heroes and building the framework for one of its most treasured franchises. In the Chris Claremont Anniversary Special, the acclaimed writer returns to the world of the X-Men with a brand-new story.

 

“The trauma imposed by these land seizures is still felt, even as nearly nine million people depend daily on the water system,” the series introduction states. “New York’s reservoirs exemplify the social compact that undergirds ambitious public infrastructures, while the stories of their making emphasize divisions between city and country, wealth and poverty, the potentials and risks inherent in large-scale environmental intervention.”

“Since meeting at Bard College nearly a decade ago, Ivry-Block, Konigsberg and Ryser have gradually built a reputation as one of the most dynamic live acts in New York’s D.I.Y. scene (and one of the most woefully missed during the pandemic),” writes Lindsay Zoladz, reviewing Palberta5000. “Palberta uses the tricks of pop structure here to a destabilizing effect: These are the kinds of hooks that implore you to sing along before you quite realize what you’re singing about.”

“As equipment for life and art, An-My Lê’s exemplary work suggested to me that one way forward might be back—into the tangles of memory and history, onto the contested terrain of the past,” writes Hai-Dang Phan for the Baffler. An-My Lê is the Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts at Bard College.

Buzzfeed features the work of students in HR 321, Advocacy Video, in which Bard undergraduates worked together with students in the clemency clinic at CUNY Law School and the human rights organization WITNESS to create short video self-presentations by applicants for clemency. Buzzfeed reporter Melissa Segura highlights the video narrative of Rodney Chandler, incarcerated at Cayuga Correctional Facility, and also interviews David Sell, with whom the class worked last year on two videos from Wende Correctional Facility. Advocacy Video is an Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences class cotaught by Thomas Keenan, professor of comparative literature and director of the Human Rights Program, and Brent Green, visiting artist in residence. This is a Human Rights course crosslisted with Film and Electronic Arts. The four videos produced by students in fall 2020 are available on the Human Rights Program website.

Time-lapse photographs of airplane arrivals and departures by Bard alumnus Pete Mauney ’93 MFA ‘00 are on view through March 1 as part of A Trip Back in Time at the Quad City International Airport in Moline, Illinois. The exhibit comprises Mauney’s photographs, Drew Morton’s digital drawings of airport runways around the world, and a selection of mid-century modern artifacts. For this series, Mauney camped out in select locations for hours at a time with his camera aperture open to capture the light emitted from airplanes and stars as they moved through the night sky. Pete Mauney lives and works in Tivoli, New York. He received his BA and MFA in photography from Bard College. 

Bard College alum, dancer, and choreographer Arthur Avilés ’87 and Charles Rice-González— cofounders of the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance—were honored with 2020 Bessie Awards for Lifetime Achievement in Dance: “For being masterful artists. For transforming the South Bronx and New York City dance and performance by creating the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. For providing an artistic home for women, Latinx, People of Color, Indigenous folx, and the LGBTQ community and for placing these artists, their communities and their arts-making front and center.”

Programs Feature a World Premiere by Sarah Hennies and Popcorn Superhet Receiver by Radiohead Band Member Jonny Greenwood

The Orchestra Now (TŌN) will begin its 2021 season with two concerts to be livestreamed from the Fisher Center at Bard on February 7 and 21, led by Leon Botstein and James Bagwell respectively. Both programs for string orchestra will offer pieces by underrepresented composers, including a new work by composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies written for the Orchestra and the Bard Music Program, where she is on faculty. Her work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer and trans identity, love, intimacy, and psychoacoustics. She was recently profiled in The New York Times about her eclectic musical style, “rife with psychological effects and emotional undercurrents.” Additional rarely-heard music will showcase Popcorn Superhet Receiver, a work by English composer Jonny Greenwood, the lead guitarist and keyboard player of the alternative rock band Radiohead; and Serenade for Strings by the Venezuelan composer, pianist, and singer Teresa Carreño, who played for Abraham Lincoln at the White House in 1863.

Upcoming highlights in the 2021 season are a concert led by assistant conductor Andrés Rivas (March 7), a performance with resident conductor Zachary Schwartzman (March 20), and two concerts led by music director Leon Botstein (April 10 and May 1).

Schoenberg & Bach
Sunday February 7 at 2 pm
Leon Botstein, conductor
Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3
Lutosławski: Funeral Music
Teresa Carreño: Serenade for Strings 
Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night)

Access: RSVP at theorchestranow.org starting on January 27 to receive a direct link to the livestream on the day of the concert. This concert will be available for delayed streaming on TŌN’s digital portal STAY TŌNED, starting on February 11.

New & Classic Works for Strings
Sunday February 21 at 2 pm
James Bagwell, conductor
Sarah Hennies: New Work (World Premiere)
Jonny Greenwood: Popcorn Superhet Receiver
Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Grieg: Holberg Suite

Access: RSVP at theorchestranow.org starting on January 27 to receive a direct link to the livestream on the day of the concert. This concert will be available for delayed streaming on STAY TŌNED starting on February 25.

STAY TŌNED
Since March 2020, TŌN has presented more than 100 audio and video streams on STAY TŌNED, its new portal regrouping of all digital initiatives. Audio content is offered every Tuesday and videos every Thursday. The events feature weekly new and archived audio and video recordings that comprise recitals, chamber music, and symphonic programs, including collaborations with the Bard Music Festival that are also available on the Fisher Center at Bard’s virtual stage, UPSTREAMING. Much of the content is also available on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Bard College Covid-19 Measures and Safety
To adapt to current circumstances, Bard College created detailed protocols for testing and screening, daily monitoring of symptoms, contact tracing, quarantine practices, and physical distancing in the classroom and across the Bard campus. This includes specific protocols for musicians campus-wide in both its undergraduate and graduate programs.

The Orchestra Now
The Orchestra Now (TŌN) is a group of 72 vibrant young musicians from 14 different countries across the globe: Bulgaria, China, Costa Rica, Hungary, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Peru, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, the U.K., and the U.S. All share a mission to make orchestral music relevant to 21st-century audiences by sharing their unique personal insights in a welcoming environment. Hand-picked from the world’s leading conservatories—including The Juilliard School, Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Royal Conservatory of Brussels, and the Curtis Institute of Music—the members of TŌN are enlightening curious minds by giving on-stage introductions and demonstrations, writing concert notes from the musicians’ perspective, and having one-on-one discussions with patrons during intermissions.

Conductor, educator, and music historian Leon Botstein, whom The New York Times said “draws rich, expressive playing from the orchestra,” founded TŌN in 2015 as a graduate program at Bard College, where he is also president. TŌN offers both a three-year master’s degree in Curatorial, Critical, and Performance Studies and a two-year advanced certificate in Orchestra Studies. The Orchestra’s home base is the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center at Bard, where it performs multiple concerts each season and takes part in the annual Bard Music Festival. It also performs regularly at the finest venues in New York, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and others across NYC and beyond. HuffPost, who has called TŌN’s performances “dramatic and intense,” praises these concerts as “an opportunity to see talented musicians early in their careers.” 

The Orchestra has performed with many distinguished guest conductors and soloists, including Hans Graf, Neeme Järvi, Vadim Repin, Fabio Luisi, Peter Serkin, Gerard Schwarz, Tan Dun, Zuill Bailey, and JoAnn Falletta. Recordings featuring The Orchestra Now include two albums of piano concertos with Piers Lane on Hyperion Records, and a Sorel Classics concert recording of pianist Anna Shelest performing works by Anton Rubinstein with TŌN and conductor Neeme Järvi. Buried Alive with baritone Michael Nagy, released on Bridge Records in August 2020, includes the first recording in almost 60 years—and only the second recording ever—of Othmar Schoeck’s song-cycle Lebendig begraben. Upcoming releases include an album of piano concertos with Orion Weiss on Bridge Records. Recordings of TŌN’s live concerts from the Fisher Center can be heard on Classical WMHT-FM and WWFM The Classical Network, and are featured regularly on Performance Today, broadcast nationwide.

For upcoming activities and more detailed information about the musicians, visit theorchestranow.org.

Leon Botstein
Leon Botstein brings a renowned career as both a conductor and educator to his role as music director of The Orchestra Now. He has been music director of the American Symphony Orchestra since 1992, artistic co-director of Bard SummerScape and the Bard Music Festival since their creation, and president of Bard College since 1975. He was the music director of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra from 2003–11 and is now conductor laureate. In 2018, he assumed artistic directorship of Campus Grafenegg and Grafenegg Academy in Austria. Mr. Botstein is also a frequent guest conductor with orchestras around the globe, has made numerous recordings, and is a prolific author and music historian. He is editor of the prestigious The Musical Quarterly and has received many honors for his contributions to music. More info online at LeonBotstein.com.

“If the postmodernism of the 1980s considered the museum to be in crisis and contemplated its ‘ruins,’ today many see these same institutions as frustratingly intact, as bulwarks against change, citadels to be stormed,” writes Professor Alex Kitnick in Artforum. “Where an earlier generation of artists associated with institutional critique pointed to the museum’s genetic incoherence, as well as to the incursion of corporate interests, today the museum itself stands as a purveyor of systemic and symbolic violence.” Alex Kitnick is assistant professor of art history and visual culture and Brant Foundation Fellow in Contemporary Arts at Bard College.